Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Verona (Agenzia Fides) - From 4 al 6 October Verona will host the 1st International Symposium 'Children in the Shadows', on the issue of child abuse organised by the Opera (Society) Don Calabria to mark its centenary. The event intends to offer an opportunity for study and testimony of how to rehabilitate children who have suffered abuse and exploitation: child soldiers, child workers, child trafficking, street children, children and witchcraft. In the world today at least 860 million children live in the shadows.
The Opera (Society) don Calabria was started in November 1907, when the founder took seven poor abandoned children into a small House in Verona. In the years that followed Rev Giovanni Calabria never failed to repeat that the main purpose of the Society was to help children in difficulty. Soon Don Calabria opened Homes in many other Italian cities trusting always in Providence for their upkeep. Don Giovanni Calabria died in 1954, but his Opera continued with the two religious congregations he had founded. In 2007, exactly a century since it started, the Opera has Houses in 14 countries and the main activity is to care for children in difficulty. Still today many children all over the world live in the shadows and in great danger and suffering, known only to a few and rarely considered in our societies.
The symposium “Children in the Shadows”, intends to gather and diffuse the voices of persons who witness the daily suffering of children. The assembly will treat issues such as street children, child labour, child soldiers, witchcraft, sick children uprooted from their land. The participants will travel ideally to Romania, Congo, Palestine, Brazil, Colombia, Angola and Peru. The aim of the Symposium is not only to describe situations of crisis. The speakers, all operators in the field, will propose concrete experiences of intervention to combat the different forms of child poverty. Theirs will be a pedagogical approach which intends to shed light of hope on to dispel the shadows of darkness. (S.L.) (Agenzia Fides 17/9/2007; righe 28, parole 354)
